Believe "ACT" - Worship

1Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. 2Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.

Worship - my all time favorite topic - and God's

Worship IS what we were created for - Worship is the purpose of your salvation - Worship is FAR MORE than just songs or an activity - Worship is everything.

We have spent the last couple of weeks talking about being passionate toward God. This is all I am trying to say. To live WHOLE HEARTEDLY toward HIM. To love Him more than anything else in such a way that it is manifestly OBVIOUS!

Matt 22:37-38

Jesus declared, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

This is the definition of Worship -

Heart - the will - the decision making capacity - to CHOOSE to love HIM

SOUL - the emotions - to delight deeply in him - to have a true emotional love affair with Jesus

Mind - the intellect - to be fascinated and entranced by Him. To Fill our minds and employ our intelligence in the pursuit of the Knowledge of God!!!

But it cannot stop there because we are human beings and we must EXTERNALIZE all that is INTERNAL! Faith without WORKS is dead.

God COMMANDS EXTERNAL acts of worship!

sing, GIVE, dance, clap, shout, kneel, bow…

Why sing songs?? - have you ever wondered this? Worship is far more than just songs, but we CANNOT neglect the singing of songs to God because he commands us to do so! Why?

CS Lewis talks about this beautifully in his short work - A reflection on the Psalms

"We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue… we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, millionaire, every celebrity who gratify that demand” page 77

So how is it that we can be OK with God demanding - our praise?? How is that loving of Him?

What do we mean when we say that a picture is “admirable”… that admiration is correct, adequate, or appropriate… that if we do not admire we shall be stupid, insensible, and great losers, we shall have missed something! page 78

to NOT admire God is to seriously miss something!

(God) is the object to admire which is simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; and not to appreciate (God) is to have lost the greatest experience and in the end to have lost ALL. page 78

imagine those poor people who have never eaten a taco!

or a chocolate chip cookie!

never seen a great movie

never been in love!

never had a great friend!

to miss these things is not to have lived at all!

But the most obvious fact about praise - whether of God or anything strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless shyness of the fear of boring others is deliberately brought it in to check it. The world RINGS with praise - lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside… I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it! “isn’t she lovely?” Wasn’t it glorious?”… My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation… delight is incomplete until it is expressed! (Page 81)

Worshipping God is the unstoppable expression of a person who has EXPERIENCED GOD and the completion of our enjoyment of HIM comes ONLY when we are allowed to express that enjoyment through praise!!!

take a bite of that cookie and you cannot help but say MMMMMM.

you offer a bite to someone else immediately - OH You HAVE to try this!!! Then you enjoy THIER ENJOYMENT of it!

God commands us to worship with every form of expression because it is only IN THE EXPRESSION of our enjoyment of Him that we will enjoy him TO THE FULLEST!!!

Worship is meant to be lavish, unashamed, and COSTLY

Mary pouring out the alabaster box on Jesus Feet

David refusing to worship God in a way that cost him nothing.

However if our External worship is ever disconnected from an internal reality it becomes detestable to God!

Worship from a wrong heart or wrong motive is detestable to God. If it is EVER about “doing your duty” and your heart is not in it God will not receive it!